VSys One: Volunteer Management Software

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Secure Messaging

E-mail is insecure. Always. So what do you do if you want to send someone a message containing confidential information? Easy: as a VSys Live message. In this example we show a way to message your volunteers (or others) securely:

Secure messaging in VSys Live is not part of the standard VSys Live implementation. In general, installing and configuring this option comes with an additional fee. See Advanced features for information.

Create your letters

  1. In Letter templates, define a letter type of "Secure message". (You'll only need to do this once.) We'll use this later in the letter template and in notifications.
    Check Prevent sending by e-mail and Prevent showing on kiosk.
  2. Create a new letter template whose Letter type is "Secure Message" and whose Preferred sending method(s) is "VSys Live"; both of these are critical. Ensure that Don't show this on the kiosk is checked: if it isn't, then the volunteer could be shown this message when checking in and out via the kiosk in a very public place.

    You can have any number of these letter templates, for example one for TB tests, one for flu shots, etc.

Set up a notification

These notifications are how the volunteer will be told about new messages.

  1. Create a notification subscription for "(referenced person)" with any Description and E-mail subject you want.
  2. Add the notification event "Pending VSys Live messages (outbound)": Delivery method "E-mail", Message types "Secure message".
    Do not check Include message body in notification: that would include the "secured" content in an insecure e-mail!
  3. Edit notification text to say something like "You have secure messages pending. Please log into volunteers.oursite.org with your credentials to read them."
  4. Save this notification text, event and subscription.

Create a scheduled task to generate and deliver the notifications

Define schedule tasks to generate notifications and deliver them. (You may already have one of these in place for other notifications.)

Show messages on VSys Live

  1. Place a listing view on your VSys Live site where volunteers can see their messages.

    Note that we used a datatable style here that hides the various Print buttons and which should take up space and be visible only when there are messages to be viewed.
  2. (Optional) You may want to hide secure messages in other listing views of messages elsewhere in VSys Live. Do not check Prevent showing on VSys Live in the letter type, though: if you do, then the letter will be hidden everywhere in VSys Live and the recipient could never view their message.

Send messages

Send secure messages using the letter template(s) you created previously. Make sure that you don't change the letter's Method from "VSys Live" to anything else: you don't want the E-mail Robot to actually deliver the letter by e-mail or text message.

What the volunteer sees

What does this get you?

Nothing can prevent the recipient from printing the contents of their browser screen, or just taking a picture of that message with their phone. This tool is great for preventing accidental disclosure, but intentional disclosure is much, much harder to stop. Educate your volunteers!

See Also

VSys Live Examples

Opportunity Recruiting